center aisle, running to beat the band! Giving voice, loud as you please! Very good, now turn and go to the right. Give him a little pop with your legs, just a pop-pop, right along with his steps, so he moves out. Very good.”
Pesky stretched his neck and put his head down. Emily could feel his back end curling and stepping a little more.
“Let the rein out. That’s his reward. Peter spun around and stared. I was just laughing. Then the side entrance of the church opened; Sally had stationed a whipper-in there, and the hounds ran out the door. Everyone was roaring with excitement, and I must say it did make the local paper. Now just pop him a couple of times with your right leg so that he will bend inward and make a larger circle—there you go. You are only signaling him, not punishing him. Pesky knows that.”
Pesky was walking fast now; his head and neck were moving from side to side and his ears were half pricked, which, Emily knew, meant that he was paying attention to her, not to the two riders who were passing the gate. Walking, walking, and in the next stride, he rose into the trot, and his trot itself lifted her out of the saddle. She posted again, this time more smoothly. It didn’t feel fast or scary, but easy, and just what someone riding a horse would like to do, even Emily.
Mrs. Herman kept talking. “At the reception, they all told me that they’d planned to use a fox! Can you imagine? But foxes are elusive—they never did catch one. Now, that is a good trot. Just loop outward to the rail, and then turn toward me. Very good!”
What was really strange was how different the landscape looked when she was on top of Pesky rather than walking beside him. It looked brighter and broader. Mrs. Herman would say, “Right over there we had a lovely gallop last winter, that’s a beautiful spot,” or, “You can’t see it from here, but behind that stand of oaks, there’s a trail that’s perfect in the summer, very shady. Next summer, we’ll go out there. Barkis likes a good long walk, two hours at least.” Emily believed that in a year they would do all sorts of things, because Mrs. Herman knew just how to do them.
—
JANET HAD ALWAYS sneered at Stanford Hospital as the only hospital in the world with its own upscale shopping mall, but there she was, standing in Handbags at Saks, actually thinking of her mother telling her that Saks was fine if you had to go there, but if you needed to really spend money, she preferred Bergdorf’s. It was a week before her due date, and that morning she’d gotten on the scale and wondered if she was going to hit thirty pounds, which some expert or other had recently declared to be the optimum weight gain. It had been an uneventful pregnancy; the day before, Jared had stoked her vanity by saying that, from the back, you couldn’t even tell she was pregnant.
The waters didn’t splash, she didn’t make a scene, and she was wearing jeans, which soaked up the mess without showing it. She turned on her heel, walked right out the door, and said to the guard, “I’m in labor”; one of the mall managers got her car and drove her the five minutes to the hospital. One moment she was standing at the entrance, and the next she was flat on her back on a gurney, and the contractions were two minutes apart, and the public-address system was calling for her doctor, Dr. McLarey. They rushed her down the hallway. She heard the doctor and the nurse who were with her say that all the delivery rooms were full, they were going to have to use a recovery room; then Dr. McLarey was told to go to Room Something Something Something. No one asked her how she felt, but she felt fine; a contraction was a contraction, after all, and better to have them come over you all at once than to build and build.
Dr. McLarey, who was five years younger than she was, was sweating when he appeared, tying on his mask, and, apart from looking at her, she supposed to make sure that she was Janet Nelson,
Pesky stretched his neck and put his head down. Emily could feel his back end curling and stepping a little more.
“Let the rein out. That’s his reward. Peter spun around and stared. I was just laughing. Then the side entrance of the church opened; Sally had stationed a whipper-in there, and the hounds ran out the door. Everyone was roaring with excitement, and I must say it did make the local paper. Now just pop him a couple of times with your right leg so that he will bend inward and make a larger circle—there you go. You are only signaling him, not punishing him. Pesky knows that.”
Pesky was walking fast now; his head and neck were moving from side to side and his ears were half pricked, which, Emily knew, meant that he was paying attention to her, not to the two riders who were passing the gate. Walking, walking, and in the next stride, he rose into the trot, and his trot itself lifted her out of the saddle. She posted again, this time more smoothly. It didn’t feel fast or scary, but easy, and just what someone riding a horse would like to do, even Emily.
Mrs. Herman kept talking. “At the reception, they all told me that they’d planned to use a fox! Can you imagine? But foxes are elusive—they never did catch one. Now, that is a good trot. Just loop outward to the rail, and then turn toward me. Very good!”
What was really strange was how different the landscape looked when she was on top of Pesky rather than walking beside him. It looked brighter and broader. Mrs. Herman would say, “Right over there we had a lovely gallop last winter, that’s a beautiful spot,” or, “You can’t see it from here, but behind that stand of oaks, there’s a trail that’s perfect in the summer, very shady. Next summer, we’ll go out there. Barkis likes a good long walk, two hours at least.” Emily believed that in a year they would do all sorts of things, because Mrs. Herman knew just how to do them.
—
JANET HAD ALWAYS sneered at Stanford Hospital as the only hospital in the world with its own upscale shopping mall, but there she was, standing in Handbags at Saks, actually thinking of her mother telling her that Saks was fine if you had to go there, but if you needed to really spend money, she preferred Bergdorf’s. It was a week before her due date, and that morning she’d gotten on the scale and wondered if she was going to hit thirty pounds, which some expert or other had recently declared to be the optimum weight gain. It had been an uneventful pregnancy; the day before, Jared had stoked her vanity by saying that, from the back, you couldn’t even tell she was pregnant.
The waters didn’t splash, she didn’t make a scene, and she was wearing jeans, which soaked up the mess without showing it. She turned on her heel, walked right out the door, and said to the guard, “I’m in labor”; one of the mall managers got her car and drove her the five minutes to the hospital. One moment she was standing at the entrance, and the next she was flat on her back on a gurney, and the contractions were two minutes apart, and the public-address system was calling for her doctor, Dr. McLarey. They rushed her down the hallway. She heard the doctor and the nurse who were with her say that all the delivery rooms were full, they were going to have to use a recovery room; then Dr. McLarey was told to go to Room Something Something Something. No one asked her how she felt, but she felt fine; a contraction was a contraction, after all, and better to have them come over you all at once than to build and build.
Dr. McLarey, who was five years younger than she was, was sweating when he appeared, tying on his mask, and, apart from looking at her, she supposed to make sure that she was Janet Nelson,
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